Miracle Legion Plays The Narrows On April 7th

From the ‘80s onward, there have always been a few bands that not a lot of people knew about but which  had a cult impact on American pop culture. One of those bands is Miracle Legion. Started in New Haven  in 1983, they always maintained a strong underground following. The band reached a wider audience when the Nickelodeon TV series “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” asked frontman Mark Mulcahy to write the soundtrack. By the time the offer happened, Miracle Legion had already broken up but Mulcahy started Polaris to write music for the show.

“The Adventures of Pete & Pete” is a fan fave for nearly anyone who grew up in the ‘90s and Polaris fans soon got to know about Miracle Legion through their adoration of Mulcahy’s songwriting. On April 7, Miracle Legion will be performing at The Narrows Center for the Arts with Providence alt-rock act The ‘Mericans. Ahead of the show I had a chat with co-founder Ray Neal about the band getting back together after 20 years, record label problems, what New Haven was like in the early ‘80s and what else he’s been doing musically.

Rob Duguay (Motif): After 20 years of being disbanded, you and Mark Mulcahy got Miracle Legion back together last year. What sparked the idea and how has it been starting the band again after such a long time?

Mr. Ray Neal: I guess what happened is that Mark [Mulcahy] had done the music for the television show “The Adventures Of Pete & Pete” years ago and they had done a reunion of Polaris, which never really existed in real life until then. Mark played a few shows with that band a few years back and they did really well — it was more of a nostalgic thing. They played at a few ComicCons and stuff. The idea that people were interested in the music sparked Mark to think about [Miracle Legion] and then he contacted me and we did it. It ended up that there were people who were interested: It’s hard to tell after all these years.

Since then, we did a bunch of shows last summer in America and the United Kingdom. They went really well … it was beyond my wildest expectations. I was very nervous that it was going to be a nostalgia thing, like remembering the old days and all that crap. The audience was really varied, a mix of young and old. The music was just as valid and as real as it had been back then, so it’s been fantastic.

RD: That’s awesome.

RN: Now we’re back doing more gigs (laughs). I wouldn’t have continued if it was just about dragging out the songs and trying to make a few bucks.

RD: It’s interesting when a band gets back together after 20 years and either they’ll be really rusty getting out of the gate or they’ll be amazing or even better than they were, after such a long time. I’m glad to hear that it’s going well. Around the time the band broke up in 1996 there was a bunch of legal limbo that happened with the label Morgan Creek after the album Drenched came out in 1993. What did the label tie the band up with exactly, and do you think that it contributed to the band’s breakup?

RN: What happened was that we did one record with Morgan Creek and we were preparing to do our second one with them. We actually had gotten to the point where we had borrowed a little cabin in Rhode Island from a friend and we spent about a month there getting totally ready to go. The recording studio was booked in New Orleans, everything was booked and about a week before we were ready to go Morgan Creek said that they weren’t going to release the record. We figured they would drop us and they refused to. For some unknown reason, they hung on to us for about two years so we couldn’t actually record and then finally that got worked out. God knows why they wanted to destroy our lives.

That kind of lead to me thinking that I’ve pounded my head against the wall for about 12 years, maybe I need a break. Once we got free of Morgan Creek, we decided to do the record that we should have done back then with them. That was Portrait Of A Damaged Family, which only got a small release and that’s kind of why we did a reissue of it last year on its 20^th Anniversary, just to make sure that the world knew that it existed.

RD: You always hear stories about a band getting tied down with a bunch of bullshit that a label puts them through, there aren’t any parallels going on and there isn’t any reason behind it. It’s the dirty part of the music business where bands sign a contract and it might say in the fine print that they’re liable to be screwed somehow and when it hits the band for no reason they don’t know what to do. It stinks and you hear these stories on a regular basis.

RN: Yeah. It’s business and sometimes that’s no good.

RD: New Haven has always had a strange music scene in a way — Toad’s Place is one of the most legendary music venues on the planet, but there haven’t been a lot of bands that have came out of that city. When Miracle Legion was starting out, what was it like playing around there?

RN: It was really cool. The whole reason why I ended up being in a band was that, starting in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in New Haven, there was a vibrant DIY and alternative group of musicians and artists and everything, and I found that. I realized that you could do anything and there was a really good music scene. It’s gone up and down since and recently I’ve been back there and there’s a good little scene going on again. There are some really good bands, but when we started out it was really great.

There was a club, a little bar, called Ron’s Place. They had music every night and it was whatever you would call alternative music back then. There was enough of a thing going on where you could go out every night and see a band from somewhere, either from Boston or Chicago or wherever. It was a really vibrant thing … with so many bands coming up through that era.

RD: In Providence, there’s a similar really cool DIY and music scene. People are going out to see local shows and there are around eight venues in the city. Providence is pretty small. It’s not big. It’s definitely crazy how that kind of community can happen in small cities.

RN: I don’t know how it happens, but it rotates around the different little small cities of America and we all get our turn, I guess.

RD: Outside of Miracle Legion, what else have you been doing musically?

RN: There’s not much on a professional level. Toward the end of Miracle Legion, the only real thing that’s been out is that I played on a Vic Chestnut record. He’s passed away since, an amazing guy from down South. I’ve played in this band from New Haven called the Jellyshirts, who are incredible, and I’ve played with a band from New York called Boy Genius, who don’t exist anymore. Now I’m living in Scotland. I’m sort of scoping out the music scene there and I hope that I’m going to be doing something pretty soon, but I’m not exactly sure what it’ll be.

RD: What made you want to move to Scotland of all places?

RN: Uhhh …… love (laughs).

RD: It’s April, so summer is coming up fairly quickly. There’s always the music festival season and everything. So what does Miracle Legion have planned for the coming months?

RN: Miracle Legion will kind of shut down for a bit because Mark has a solo record coming out later in April and he’s going to be concentrating on that. This summer we won’t be doing anything, I’ll be back in Scotland enjoying the rain.

Buy tickets to see Miracle Legion & The ‘Mericans @ The Narrows Center For The Arts on April 7^th:

http://narrowscenter.ticketfly.com/event/1376110-miracle-legion-fall-river/

Miracle Legion on Bandcamp: https://miraclelegion.bandcamp.com/